SW Fic: Love and Loss: A Treatise on Attachment
Title: Love and Loss: A Treatise on Attachment (FFNet & AO3)
Fandom: Star Wars
Rating: G
Word Count: 6,790
Summary: Excerpts from the thesis of a Senior Padawan.
Series: The Stylus is Mightier than the Saber
Okay, so I think pretty much the biggest question about this is: why?
So let's break it down.
This is pure, unabashed meta. I went all-out for reader immersion on this. The notes are instructor's grading notes and student ID information. I changed my pseudonym on AO3 to make it the Student ID (...aaaand that didn't work quite the way I thought it would, but it's good enough). There are NO NOTES in the fic itself from me. That's probably going to negatively impact the reception of the story in terms of hits and interest, but it's tagged as Meta and that should be warning enough. And there are NO OTHER tags. (I should probably make the summary an "Abstract." probably will change that later.) My profile says to check here for notes, so here are the notes. I'll probably expound a bit more on the series page in terms of "fic marketing" later on, but whatever.
This is a _dry_ fic. This isn't even fic - it's meta, which is new for me, and setup, which isn't. Only crazy people put this much effort into their background for the actual story, but apparently since the Deleted Scenes of Action Figures Sold Separately, that's a thing that I do. I'm hoping this is world-building stuff that's going to let me work on some original stories and finally branch out from fanfic. Hell, wait until I find a way to coherently upload the excell chart I compiled this morning of the Star Wars timeline. It took me two hours to make, after hours of actually reading through articles on Wookiepedia to figure out what's what over the last several months while I pushed this together. Admittedly, I did reach an "I don't care anymore this is supposed to be excerpts just mark in a jump over excised text and move on" point where I gave up and posted.
But back to the original question: What is this?
Well, it's intended to be a graduating thesis written by a SW character (go on, look at the student ID "initials" (yes, I looked up the AureBesh SW alphabet and downloaded the font) and tell me who it is) who is a Senior Padawan, for a philosophical course based on advanced analysis/interpretation of the Jedi Code. It's going to exist in an AU and be used by potentially two different AU-based fics - neither of which is written yet. I couldn't. I had to get this out first.
And yes, this character will be going overboard and writing more than just one senior thesis. Check the footnotes; he cites himself, and it's going to drive Mace Windu nuts. Even more so when the Council learns that in one of these AU's, the student ID it's submitted under doesn't exist. More on that later.
What really prompted me to write this, though, was the bevy of fics out there that think the Modern Jedi Code is stupid, but just basically come right out and say that with no reasoning behind it. I don't disagree. But I want to persuade the reader that I'm right, and I want to create an AU where a character (obviously, from the tone of the fic) is suggesting and advocating a return to the Jedi Code which existed before Odan-Urr's interpretation. The problem with any such universe though is that Odan-Urr's There is no emotion, there is peace has been in existence for 4,000 years as of the prequels. Granted, the original Je'daii Code Emotion yet peace probably existed for something like 31,000 years before that as far as I can tell, but the character in the timeframe I'm working with would be advocating a return to more ancient tradition and going against the then-current establishment, which has been in place for longer than most actually-current governments on Earth. So, good luck with that - take baby steps. Starting with a frankly almost heretical senior thesis on the subject of attachment. There will be more - take a look at the other titles in this series and you'll get a clue.
Another fun thing that drove me nuts over the past two days was the timeline. The SW timelines will give you fits, I swear. Everything is in "BBY" - "Before the Battle of Yavin," which is the First Death Star's destruction. But obviously, that would not have been the time/date system in place for the prequel trilogies or Episode IV. So I needed to figure that out to make anything make sense. I settled on using the Treaty of Coruscant, in 3653 BBY as that was at some point declared "Year 0" by the Galactic Standard Calendar. I thought that would make sense for the prequel trilogy at least, and Episode IV I didn't care about because the Empire reworked everything as well to put the Purge at Year 0 for them. This also allowed me to avoid nonsense including the 'Great ReSynchronization.' The only thing left to do was math, converting everything in BBY to BTC (Before the Treaty of Coruscant) and ATC (Afte the Treaty of Coruscant). THAT got confusing at one point as well, hence the excell sheet. Before that there was a pen, paper, and actual handwritten notes for goodness sake.
So yeah, this is a dry, dry piece of writing. There were almost a lot more footnotes but I got tired; count your lucky stars.
Fandom: Star Wars
Rating: G
Word Count: 6,790
Summary: Excerpts from the thesis of a Senior Padawan.
Series: The Stylus is Mightier than the Saber
Okay, so I think pretty much the biggest question about this is: why?
So let's break it down.
This is pure, unabashed meta. I went all-out for reader immersion on this. The notes are instructor's grading notes and student ID information. I changed my pseudonym on AO3 to make it the Student ID (...aaaand that didn't work quite the way I thought it would, but it's good enough). There are NO NOTES in the fic itself from me. That's probably going to negatively impact the reception of the story in terms of hits and interest, but it's tagged as Meta and that should be warning enough. And there are NO OTHER tags. (I should probably make the summary an "Abstract." probably will change that later.) My profile says to check here for notes, so here are the notes. I'll probably expound a bit more on the series page in terms of "fic marketing" later on, but whatever.
This is a _dry_ fic. This isn't even fic - it's meta, which is new for me, and setup, which isn't. Only crazy people put this much effort into their background for the actual story, but apparently since the Deleted Scenes of Action Figures Sold Separately, that's a thing that I do. I'm hoping this is world-building stuff that's going to let me work on some original stories and finally branch out from fanfic. Hell, wait until I find a way to coherently upload the excell chart I compiled this morning of the Star Wars timeline. It took me two hours to make, after hours of actually reading through articles on Wookiepedia to figure out what's what over the last several months while I pushed this together. Admittedly, I did reach an "I don't care anymore this is supposed to be excerpts just mark in a jump over excised text and move on" point where I gave up and posted.
But back to the original question: What is this?
Well, it's intended to be a graduating thesis written by a SW character (go on, look at the student ID "initials" (yes, I looked up the AureBesh SW alphabet and downloaded the font) and tell me who it is) who is a Senior Padawan, for a philosophical course based on advanced analysis/interpretation of the Jedi Code. It's going to exist in an AU and be used by potentially two different AU-based fics - neither of which is written yet. I couldn't. I had to get this out first.
And yes, this character will be going overboard and writing more than just one senior thesis. Check the footnotes; he cites himself, and it's going to drive Mace Windu nuts. Even more so when the Council learns that in one of these AU's, the student ID it's submitted under doesn't exist. More on that later.
What really prompted me to write this, though, was the bevy of fics out there that think the Modern Jedi Code is stupid, but just basically come right out and say that with no reasoning behind it. I don't disagree. But I want to persuade the reader that I'm right, and I want to create an AU where a character (obviously, from the tone of the fic) is suggesting and advocating a return to the Jedi Code which existed before Odan-Urr's interpretation. The problem with any such universe though is that Odan-Urr's There is no emotion, there is peace has been in existence for 4,000 years as of the prequels. Granted, the original Je'daii Code Emotion yet peace probably existed for something like 31,000 years before that as far as I can tell, but the character in the timeframe I'm working with would be advocating a return to more ancient tradition and going against the then-current establishment, which has been in place for longer than most actually-current governments on Earth. So, good luck with that - take baby steps. Starting with a frankly almost heretical senior thesis on the subject of attachment. There will be more - take a look at the other titles in this series and you'll get a clue.
Another fun thing that drove me nuts over the past two days was the timeline. The SW timelines will give you fits, I swear. Everything is in "BBY" - "Before the Battle of Yavin," which is the First Death Star's destruction. But obviously, that would not have been the time/date system in place for the prequel trilogies or Episode IV. So I needed to figure that out to make anything make sense. I settled on using the Treaty of Coruscant, in 3653 BBY as that was at some point declared "Year 0" by the Galactic Standard Calendar. I thought that would make sense for the prequel trilogy at least, and Episode IV I didn't care about because the Empire reworked everything as well to put the Purge at Year 0 for them. This also allowed me to avoid nonsense including the 'Great ReSynchronization.' The only thing left to do was math, converting everything in BBY to BTC (Before the Treaty of Coruscant) and ATC (Afte the Treaty of Coruscant). THAT got confusing at one point as well, hence the excell sheet. Before that there was a pen, paper, and actual handwritten notes for goodness sake.
So yeah, this is a dry, dry piece of writing. There were almost a lot more footnotes but I got tired; count your lucky stars.